1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a hollow, metallic wood golf club, called a metal wood, particularly to the structure of a head thereof.
2. Prior Art
A head of a so-called metal wood club is constructed of metallic shell members made for example of titanium, thus defining a hollow interior. The hollow interior is, depending on cases, filled with foaming resin, such as hard urethane foam.
A golf club head is subjected to elastic deformation due to impact developed by striking balls. For conventional golf clubs, a face shell, a crown shell and a sole shell would be all elastically deformed due to the impact. As a face is to contact balls, elastic forces due to the deformation thereof will contribute to enhancing the initial travelling speed of balls and elongating the travelling distances thereof. Accordingly, a face need to be effectively deformed. For the deformation of a sole and a crown which construct a head body, however, the deformation thereof will hinder the effective deformation of the face, so that so-called loss of power would take place. Thus, rigid soles and crowns are desirable.
Conventionally, there is proposed a metal wood head in Japanese Patent Un-Examined Publication No. 60-36074, in which a nearly L-shaped reinforcing member is welded to the inside of shells along a sole and a face. Further, U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,983 to Chen discloses that a face reinforcing member is provided on a rear surface of the face to reinforce the same. With such reinforcing member, however, not only a head body but also a face is kept from being deformed, and thus no effective elasticity of a face would be generated at impact.